Baka-Tsuki - User contributions [en]

Kara no Kyoukai:Chapter05 05

2007-08-03T01:40:46Z

80.220.221.236: grammar/typo fixes

'''/5 Paradigm Paradox'''

Winter's arrived. 

Just like my short summer, the autumn that came to these streets seems to have been short too. 

Looking out from the office window the streets are overcast by a cold sky that threatens to snow at any time. Day by day the traces of autumn disappear to the point where one begins to think the abnormal weather has erased the phrase autumn from the list of seasons. 

That's right. In the short period from the end of September to this day of November 7, I ran through life like a prize racehorse. 

To speak of my life during that time, I was at a driving school that one of my relatives runs from the start of October. This school is a boarding school style affair where students stay for 3 weeks and finish a normal course in a shorter space of time. 

Leaving this street for nearly a month didn't appeal to me. But I couldn't turn down my relative's offer, and Touko-san - my boss at work - approved this trip. So I ended up having no choice but to go. And so my 3 weeks in the school that felt like a concentration camp in some ways finished and I came back to this place where I was born and grew up. 

"... Mmm, name: Kokuto Mikiya." 

For no reason at all I read the contents on the license in my hand. 

My name is clearly printed on the small license. Apart from that, my registration location, my birth date, current address and a photo of my face are on it. There's really only a minimal amount of personal information entered on it, but among all the proofs of identity an individual can possess it is the one with the greatest range of uses. --- That point was just so strange that I couldn't stand it. 

"What kind of qualification would this thing called a license be, Touko-san?" 

I address Touko-san who is sleeping on the bed in one corner of the same room. Of course I don't expect anything like a response. 

"--- It's a contract, that thing." 

However, Touko-san kindly responded. 

This person caught a horrible cold and has already spent nearly a week lying in bed. She was sleeping till a moment ago with a 38 degree fever, but it seems she just woke up. 

The reason --- she's probably hungry. 

It's reasonable, the time is already past noon. 

Right now, I'm at the company office. 

To be accurate this is Touko-san's personal room on the fourth floor of the building where the office is, it's a place I don't normally frequent. Having moved the chair to be by the window I'm looking at the license I got only a short time ago, while Touko-san is lying in bed. 

... Nevertheless it wasn't an ero-material situation, it was simply that Touko-san is lying in bed with a cold. What awaited me when I got back from the boarding school was a Shiki who silently condemned me for something and my boss who was in bed with a cold. 

These two people claimed to have become friendlier in the time I was away but Shiki flatly refused to nurse Touko-san, and I think she even went so far as to say something along the lines of, 'I hope your brain melts away'. ... Shiki who displayed the same coldness as ever is a friend of mine from high school. Full name, Ryougi Shiki. Sex, female. Her manner of speaking is rough so now and then there are people who get confused. 

On the other hand the woman in front of me who has a cold towel upon her head is called Aozaki Touko, and is the boss of the company where I work. The only employee is me so it is a little awkward to call it a company. 

This person has a genius's nature and, as those kinds of people sometimes do, has few acquaintances. Even after catching a cold she said that she didn't do anything and lay in bed for the whole day. The person in question saying that it couldn't be helped since she didn't have an immunity to this cold at the current time or some nonsense like that. 

... Personally I think that if you don't have any immunity it's really not the time to be sleeping, but as a magus Touko-san probably doesn't feel like engaging the services of a doctor. No doubt that thing called pride is stopping her. 

Due to those circumstances I couldn't really meet up with Shiki after a month away, and ended up nursing Touko-san for the whole day.

A contract, weakly uttering her reply Touko-san picked up the glasses on the bedside table. 

Normally she seems so sinister that one doesn't quite notice that she is a beautiful woman, but the current Touko-san who was suffering from a cold was so gentle and pretty that you could think she was someone else. 

In order to clear her still drowsy conciousness Touko-san keeps talking. 

"That, you see, is a contract saying you have mastered driving, it says that you have learnt something important but the objective has changed. In this country it's no longer a matter of getting a qualification as a result of learning, but learning in order to get the qualification. So at the point where you obtain the qualification, what you learnt loses its meaning. A qualification that has degraded to merely being evidence saying 'I have learnt this much', it's like a contract." 

Does the chicken come first, or the egg, Touko-san added and raised herself up. 

"But isn't a qualification something like that? After all everyone studies with a goal in mind." 

"Of course there are always opposites. It's a topic with no conclusion so goals and results, behaviours and processes are dissociated things (Translator note: uhh what the heck does this mean Touko? Stop speaking in professor mode!). There will be people who started driving because they got a license. Just as there will be those who, while they get their driver's license, skip any instruction and take the exam right away." 

She normally speaks gently when she has her glasses on, but whether or not it's because she is sick she's even gentler then usual today. 

I digress, but when this person went to take the test she got such flawless results in the written and practical tests that she apparently got her license while being glared at by the examiner. 

"I did hear about getting a license without going to a driving school, but I see Touko-san was such a case. ... Speaking of which boss, the image of you going to a driving school is just ---." 

--- So scary, I can't imagine it. 

Apparently unamused by my hastily swallowed comment, Touko-san frowns and looks sharply in this direction. "Isn't that a discourtesy Mikiya-kun? In those days I was still a student so there would have been nothing strange about me going to a driving school if I chose to. I was no different from any ordinary university student." 

Touko-san talks with her eyes closed as if she's complaining. 

... That's right. Now that I think about it Touko-san was once a teen too. Imagining what she would have looked like as a lovable young girl still in her studies, I couldn't help but swallow my breath. Because that was a mental attack so strong as to squeeze my heart. 

"... That picture seems a whole lot more abnormal ma'am." 

"--- You are slowly revealing your true sentiments while the other party is a patient, aren't you?" 

Of course. Usually I'm the one that keeps getting picked on, so if I don't at least retaliate at a time like this things don't balance out. 

When I stood up to at least replace the towel for her, Touko-san said she was hungry, revealing a very frank craving. Distressingly, the porridge that was made for her ran out this morning. 

"Shall I go an buy something from the store? Say, udon with eggs." 

"No ~, that's all soggy. Hey, Mikiya-kun, won't you make something for me? You live alone so you know how to cook right?" 

That idea that if you live alone you know how to cook, just who spread that groundless rumour? Letting my shoulders fall (Translator's note: There a phrase that would fit in to replace that but I can't think of it) under Touko-san's anticipatory gaze, I firmly declared to her the harsh truth. 

"Sorry, the only things I can make are noodles. The lowest rank consisting of pouring hot water into a cup of instant noodles, and the highest rank being pasta. If that's okay I will use the kitchen for a bit." 

As expected, Touko-san wore a bluntly disgusted face. 

"Then where did you get this morning's porridge from? It was a taste that couldn't have come from a convenience store." 

"That was Shiki. She says that she doesn't cook very often, but it turns out she's pretty skilled when it comes to Japanese food." 

Oho, goes Touko-san and blinks as if she's surprised. I was of that opinion too but really, Shiki cooked well enough to shame a chef. Shiki comes from a distinguished family and because of that her sense of taste is extraordinarily high class. For herself she will eat anything, but I think that's because she didn't make it so any taste can be forgiven. Shiki cooking meant preparing something that she herself could tolerate, so it's really no wonder that her cooking skills would go up as a result. 

"--- How surprising, Shiki doing something for me. But well, that fits. Since that kid is adept at using a knife. ... I suppose it can't be helped. There are some bottles of pills on the desk so can you get them for me?" 

Realising she can't get a meal off me, Touko-san lies back on the bed. 

When I went to get the three medicine bottles on Touko-san's desk --- one photo caught my attention. 

Maybe a scene of a foreign land. A brick road, and a clock tower that looks as if it could come from a movie. Beneath a grey sky that looks as if it will start snowing at any moment, three people are standing next to each other. 

Two men and a girl. 

Both men are of tall stature and one seems Japanese. The other person looks like a person of that land and fits in so well with the scenery that there is no sense of incongruity about him. No --- it's actually that the presence of the Japanese man is so strong. The sense of existence that flows off that Japanese man standing there with a dark expression is so powerful it rises up from the picture. ... A heaviness so strong it makes it hard to breath. I once felt it close up. 

That was, yeah. Could it just have been a sensation from that unforgettable time. While I gazed at the photo to try and confirm that, something even more striking caught my eye. 

The Japanese man is wearing a coat reminiscent of a black kimono and the handsome blond man with blue eyes is in a red coat. 

There is a girl standing between those two. 

Ebon black hair which makes the black coat of the Japanese man look pale. The hair that flows down below her waist, rather than hair it seems like some wonderfully beautiful decoration. 

A calm face still tinged with the innocence of childhood, in one word I could describe it as radiant. The girl is so excessively beautiful that it feels like she will snatch away my soul through the photo. --- One is provoked in to wondering if mixing a Japanese ghost with the beauty of a flower blooming in the shadows and a fairy from a western fairy tale wouldn't result in a human like this. 

"Touko-san, this photo ---." 

Without even realising it I was mumbling those words. 

Touko-san takes off her glasses as she replies. 

"Oh? Ah, those are my old friends. I couldn't remember what they looked like so I took that out of my album. --- Around the time I was in London, it was a unique mistake." 

When she takes off her glasses Touko-san's manner of speaking is the first thing to change. Previously my friend Ryougi Shiki had a somewhat obscure dual personality, but this person called Aozaki Touko really changes identities as if flicking a switch. She says that it's actually her personality and not her identity that changes, but from my perspective it doesn't really matter what it is. 

To sum up the Touko-san who has taken off her glasses in one phrase, she's a cold person. 

A cold mode of behaviour and speech, a cold ideology, a cold reason --- an image of humanity formed from those sorts of things, that is the Touko-san without glasses. 

"I guess it's a few years back now. Around the time when my little sister was entering high school, roughly eight years ago now. Remembering people's faces is my speciality but for some reason I'm poor at recalling those memories. And I don't feel like tidying it up into a nice shape either since it's a pointless exercise." 

Still lying on the bed, Touko-san keeps talking as if she's absorbed in thought. ... For Touko-san to be talking about her past, it's not something you see very often. I think it was true when she said that this was her first time catching a cold. Is this the kind of thing you call a ghost's 곽란. (TN: Sorry I couldn't find this word) 

"London --- that's the capital of England right?" 

Putting the three medicine bottles at the head of Touko-san's bed, I pull up a nearby chair and sit down next to the bed. Touko-san takes out some pills from the bottles and swallows them, then lies down and starts talking. 

"Yes. At the time, having run out from under my grandfather, there was nowhere for me to go. I calculated that there was nothing else for an amateur mage who didn't even have the skills or the resources to make an atelier to do but go under the wing of a large organisation. It's like an university. The equipment is worn and defaced, and failing, but there's nothing wrong with the establishment itself. In the shadows of a large museum there was a western-eastern ancient and modern age research department. Of course it was actually the association that nourished so many of today's mages. That was also a treasury beyond my wildest hopes." 

Soliloquising as if dazed by the fever Touko-san's complexion kept getting paler. When I got worried thinking that those pills might have been poison not medicine, Touko-san assured me that it wasn't poison. 

"It's a good opportunity so just let me talk a little longer. 

... It was difficult for a girl not yet twenty to study abroad. Especially since an Aozaki gets treated like a heretic. In order to enter that place I decided to specialise in rune sorcery. At the time rune wasn't popular and there were few people studying it. The association side needed a researcher too. So stabilising the rune characters from that side took me 2 years, and another few years to approach the originals in the Tule association, so it may have been about the time I just got my own workroom. 

One day while I was absorbed in making the doll that was my goal, I met that man. Someone who possessed a unique personal history like originally being a Tamil priest. He was a hellish man. His strong will, and tempered shell, it was like an eternally burning drive for achievement. 

... Hellish. What I mean by saying that Kokuto, is that if the idea of Hell was to gain a will and take the form of a man, my hypothesis is that it would be something like him. To that degree he can't accept others, he was just absorbing misery. His ability as a mage was full of flaws, but his strong ego surpassed everything. 

--- It was a coarse guy like that I fell for." 

As if she's looking at the man in her memories, Touko-san thinly opens her eyes. Her look is an undecipherable one that you couldn't say was of hatred or compassion. 

Without even really knowing the contents of the story very well, I say, "oh that's how it was" and agree with her. Not annoying the patient is the main point behind nursing. 

"Oho, so Touko-san's doll making is a foreign art." 

To that question which was perfectly unsuited to the mood Touko-san says, yes it is, and nods seriously (TN: awful phrasing here I know). 

Listening to Touko-san's mutterings is fine, but not being able to understand what it means makes me feel sorry as a listener. That's why I would prefer that she tells this kind of story to Shiki or Azaka, but the fever-addled Touko-san raised the gear on the story's incomprehensibility. 

"The reason I got into doll making you see, was to reach 「　　」through the perfect human body. 

Adversely he chose to try and reach 「　　」through the soul, or in other words an existence that is 「there」but 「not there」, like a cat inside an unfathomable box. The box has a definite form so you can't see inside it, but the formless soul can be seen into. 

It's similar to the collective subconsciousness some psychologist proposed. He probably thought that if he felt his way along that chain he would eventually reach the heart. 

Ah, but you see. Both he and I were trying for the original work. The one original, you could call it humanity's individuality. Modern humans have become so divided that their lineages and attributes are already impossible to divine. Therefore it's impossible to reach the origin. Lineages and attributes, or in other words fate. It's like a number form, so a life only achieves a certain result if this ability and that role is poured in. A life that can only achieve this result. It's natural, since the genes have only been granted those abilities. If you call that fate then it will be fate. 

The pinnacle of creation has become too complicated. Probably as a result of being invested with many abilities after pursuing omnipotence. The genes that are the data which form a human are nothing more than four different bases. But the simple spiral formed by stacking those four types of bases has fallen into the paradox that by being piled up till it was impossible to measure it really has become impossible to measure. 

So --- I decided that the only thing to do was to make it myself. Although the result was cruel. No matter how hard I tried, the only thing I could make was a perfect me." 

The medicine must have started working as the colour returns to Touko-san's cheeks. 

The eyes that stare into the air too, their focus gets steadily blurred. 

"But --- that person will still be going on. 

The guy that looked toward humanity's 'origin', he said that he got expelled by his teacher while searching for the form of the soul. ... There must be some sort of karma. For him to be getting involved in this kind of thing at this point. Do you understand Kokuto? I'll warn you beforehand, but no matter what happens do not approach the man in the photo." 

Touko-san spoke as if squeezing out the last dregs of her strength, then she fell asleep straight away. 

Her slight chest moves up and down, repeating quiet breaths. It's definitely that the medicine has spread and she's fallen asleep. 

Changing the wet towel on Touko-san's forehead, I left the room so as not to wake her. 

There's no one in the office next door. 

Only, it's just that a high toned noise can be heard from the factories around the building. 

Feeling that trailing noise on my skin I muttered to myself. 

"--- Don't approach him? I can't Touko-san. You see, I knew that guy two years ago." 

But what significance that fact has, I can't know. No, I'm not even sure if the person who helped me then is the guy in the photo. 

Inside me, that person in the photo is unidentifiable, and the fever-ridden Touko-san's words are scattered about like puzzle pieces. 

Uncertain things call out uncertain words. It's only that, but the air that was calm till just now thins out and it feels like I'll run out of oxygen. 

An uneasiness I can't express with words sends a shiver down my spine.

Kara no Kyoukai:Chapter05 04

2007-05-30T10:12:58Z

80.220.221.236: simple grammar and typo fixes

'''/4'''

'''Translator's Note: It might be just my clumsy translation but even after I spent a while straightening this chapter out Enjoh's monologues is this chapter chapter are very disjointed. Please bear with on this one, I suspect that it's just Enjoh being an emo anyway.'''

That day, I was at the back alley where I first met Ryougi. 

Even in these daylight hours there's no one about and not even the myriad noises of the streets can be heard. Blowing white steam from my mouth '''(TN: Does English have a phrase for this? You know, the white fog you get when its a cold morning), I was standing in that place from which the bloodstains of that time had neatly disappeared. 

Clickclickclickclick. 

October's drawing to an end too. It's approaching one month since I ran away casting aside home, work, and everything else in my life. 

However there's no sign that the police are looking for me. Not only that but on the TV news that I diligently go to check everyday at the mall, nothing about the murder I had committed was being said. I've been reading newspapers too whenever I felt like it, but as expected no such story appeared. 

That affair, it's in a whole different dimension from the street homicides going on right now. There's no doubt that it's the sort of thing that the TV audiences would lap up. So there's no way it would have been handled as a simple accident. 

"--- Impossible --- Could it be that they haven't discovered it yet?" 

Hearing my mumbling voice, I want to throw up the contents of my stomach. 

It's not as if it matters what happens to people like that but --- just thinking about what those bodies would look like after they had been left there for a month wraps me up in gloom. 

Should I go take a look --- no, that's not possible. I don't have the courage to do so, and there could be police watching the scene. 

In any case all I can do is keep a watch on the situation from outside like this. 

--- Just once. 

Just once is fine so if it was reported on TV as a crime, I could harden my mind and disappear from Ryougi's life. If Enjoh Tomoe becomes known to the world as a murderer it would be an inconvenience to Ryougi --- and I could leave this street with no regrets. 

"Damn it, what is up with that. You bastard called me---." 

Does that mean I can't leave Ryougi. 

Clickclickclickclick. 

The wind's picked up. I came walking out of the back alley as if I was being chased by the cold north wind. I was walking through the downtown area like that when I saw Ryougi at a far-off pedestrian crossing. A red jumper over a kimono, it couldn't be anyone but her. 

Looking at that figure from far away --- I spotted a familiar face. 

It's a guy from that night Ryougi and I first met, one of the ones who were the cause of that meeting. With practised footsteps he's acting natural while he follows Ryougi. 

Click, clickclick, click. 

--- Hey, that's dangerous. 

Mixing into the crowd I stalk the guy stalking Ryougi. 

After stalking Ryougi for a long time the guy goes off somewhere. Shortly afterwards, another guy from that time replaced him and continued to stalk Ryougi. 

It seems that they don't actually plan to do anything to Ryougi but simply stalk her. Even so --- for them their movements are too faultless and well-organised to be unsuspicious. 

I kept watch on them for an hour, and then decided that I needed to know where the one that had gone off before had gone. Fortunately the one that fainted after eating Ryougi's high kick finishes his shadowing and starts to go back. 

When I hurried after him he -------- went into the alleyway that I had been in till just a little before. 

--- It's a trap. 

It's not for me to know what this is all for. But, this whole thing definitely has an ominous feeling to it. 

Stopping at the entrance of that string-like path leading into the back alley, I looked inwards. Wouldn't it be possible to find out what they are doing from here. 

Looking carefully I see someone standing there. 

It's a wine-red long coat. 

That slim-figured shadow, is it a guy? His long hair is the colour of gold, and even when I'm looking from a distance I can tell his is an annoying face that looks as if its owner is looking down on someone ---. 

But --- who is that guy. 

"□ □ □ □ □ □ ---." 

A fluent intonation flows past my ears. 

Surprised, I look back but no one is there. 

When I quickly turned back around to look at the alley, the man in the coat had disappeared. 

A cold north wind blows through the street. 

Rrrr, my body's shivering. 

Hugging my body which is still shaking oblivious to Enjoh Tomoe's will, 
Resisting an urge to cry for no reason with all my might. 
I was feeling the end of autumn and the end of my existence. 

***

Night fell and I told Ryougi about the fact that she was being stalked. That the creeps from that night were actively keeping watch on her. '''(TN: For some reason my copy said 'keeping watch on you' but I guessed it was a typo, don't agree? Change it then)''' 

But Ryougi's reply was brief as usual. 

"Oh, really?" 

So? She asks with her flawlessly clear eyes. 

Even I lost my grip on reason this time around. 

"It's not something you go 'so?' to! It's not just those jerks watching you! Do you have any memories of a foreigner wearing a red coat?" 

"I don't have any delightful friends like that." 

That was it for Ryougi, and she didn't respond to this story any longer. 

What happened was that she lost interest. No matter what effect an incident will have on Ryougi Shiki, if Ryougi Shiki herself thinks it's unimportant this brat will ignore it. Even if she was to be disgraced and treated like a murderer she probably wouldn't care. Since what's important isn't what the world thinks but how she feels. 

... Yeah, I was expecting her to be like that too, and I thought that Ryougi for whom that was natural was proudly lonely, but this time at least is an exception. 

Those creeps --- no, that guy is real. 

I and those jerks are either fake, or have no possibility of being an imitation. Like Ryougi we have pure impulses. 

"Listen to me! This isn't somebody else's business. It involves none other than yourself! At least spare some thought for my worried mind!" 

My shouting may have annoyed her, the kimono girl nimbly turned the gabuza '''(TN: again... what is this thing?)''' on the bed around and looked up at me. 

At that time, I think I was wearing a very serious face. 

It isn't even because Ryougi is so preposterously unworried. The reason is a bit simpler. That is --- 

"Mm, it definitely is my business and not someone else's. But why are you worrying about my problem Enjoh?" 

Well, that's --- 

"Idiot, of course I'm worried. I don't want you to die. Because --- I've fallen for you." 

The taut air suddenly freezes. 

... I said it. I who must leave soon, said what must not be said. 

Those words --- above everything else for myself, they were something that should not have been said. 

Ryougi's looking at me as if she's seeing something strange. 

A few seconds pass and the kimono girl bursts into laughter. 

"Hahaha, what are you saying Enjoh! You've fallen for me? Did that guy in the red coat hypnotize you or something? Try going through you memory, there will definitely be a weird noise mixed up in there!" 

Ryougi --- Shiki, laughs it off and will not face me. 

I don't know what proof she may have, but she definitely concluded that it couldn't be real. 

As for me, obviously --- I can't accept that. 

"It's not like that! I'm being sincere. Seeing you, for the first time I felt that a human was beautiful, and I thought I had finally found someone like me. You are real. If it's for you I can do anything ---." 

Grabbing Ryougi's shoulders, I glare at Ryougi. 

Ryougi stopped laughing and turned around to look at me. 

"Hmm, is that so?" 

A dry tone. 

Ryougi's hand grabs my sleeve. All of a sudden, I spin lightly around as if I had become a piece of paper, and end up lying flat on the bed. 

Ryougi is on top of me, holding a knife ---. 

"Then, can you die for me?" 

The knife blade touches my neck. 

The light in Ryougi's eyes doesn't change much. 

Stabbing down the knife as usual, she will flippantly kill me. 

Ryougi isn't asking if I can die doing something for her. She's saying, I'm going to kill you for my enjoyment. That's what the question just then means. 

--- This girl can't feel affection except through something like that. 

Dying is scary. Even now I'm so scared that I can't even tremble. But, this life of mine won't be long. Having killed someone I'm bound to be caught by the police and never be able to return to this place again. In that case --- 

"Alright. I'll die for you." 

I said it. 

Ryougi's eyes, they regain a humane light. 

"Do as you like, I haven't got long left anyway. Since I killed my parents. It will probably be an execution. If that's the case --- I think dying by your hand is better than the gallows." 

"You killed your parents?" 

With her knife pressed against my throat, Ryougi asks me again. I decided then to reveal the memories I had hidden, and tell the story just before I died. That was probably because I wanted to at least pretend to be at a confession at least once before I died. 

"Yeah. I killed my parents. Because they were bad parents, they borrowed money behind my back and went around having fun. I couldn't handle cleaning up their mess so, time after time --- so that I wouldn't screw up and have it end at attempted murder --- I wildly stabbed them in the gut with a kitchen knife. Our house doesn't even have heating. That night was cold too right? My breath was steaming white, but a human's intestines were warm. Steam coming from a human's stomach, that was a sight that you might see once in your life! 

Heh heh, rats --- everything was paralyzed and I became an idiot. I hadn't put the knife down, and my hands kept digging into those guts. Eventually, it got to the stage where you couldn't tell whether I had stabbed them to kill them or to dig into their guts, and you could no longer tell that those things had once been human." 

Shall I cry, I thought but the tears wouldn't come. 

Instead I felt strangely refreshed. By the fact that I had killed those awful parents and was really free. 

"--- Tomoe. You... why did you kill them?" asks the girl in front of my eyes. 

I think. Why did I kill them. Did I hate them. Or were they annoying. No, it wasn't such a clean emotion. 

In that case, was I --- afraid? 

"I, was afraid. I had --- a dream. 

I come home from work and go to bed. Shortly afterwards I hear my mum and dad arguing in the room beside mine, and the door opens. My father's covered in blood and my mother is standing there. Just like that she stabs me to death, then cuts her own throat and dies. 

At first I thought, I'm going to die like this, but it wasn't like that. When I woke up in the morning no such thing had happened. I must have had dreams like that because I definitely wanted to kill my parents but couldn't. Also --- I had that dream every day. Every, single, day, that dream repeated itself. I call it a dream but everyday? I couldn't stand it anymore. I, was more afraid of the night when I got murdered. I didn't want to have dreams like that anymore. So --- all that happened was that I killed them before I was murdered, in order that I might never have a dream like that again." 

Yeah, that night. My mother who opened the door because she had something to talk about, I stabbed her over and over again with the knife I had hidden. In my dreams I lost count of the number of times I had been killed. I tried my hardest to kill her as if I was pouring out all the frustration that had been building up inside of me till now. 

I'm free. There's no reason for me to be chained down by such awful parents, or such unpleasant dreams. 

Damn it, what a befouled freedom. 

"--- You are an idiot." 

Ryougi speaks solemnly. Her cold tone conversely makes me feel refreshed. 

It really did. I'm stupid, so I couldn't think of any other way to run away, but I don't regret it. Even if I'm bound to be caught by the police, I will still feel better that I did in those nightmare filled days. 

... But, one little thing. It's something I realized as I told my story. 

Till now I've lived thinking that only I was important. Even supposing such a person was serious, to say that they've fallen for someone isn't something they could do. ... They don't have the right to do that. It's natural that Ryougi would just laugh it off. Still ... the fact that I want to protect this girl at least is real. It's the only real thing to this false me. But in the hands of a dirty murderer like me, even that thought becomes polluted. --- If I had any regrets that is what I regret most right now. 

The moment I understood that. The fever that had been driving me towards a violent outburst rapidly cooled off, like an old TV that has been replaced and thrown out. 

"Still ---." 

I, don't regret that murder. 

Tomoe is saying in my head that the murder was not something he should have done. 

Ryougi is looking at me with a far-off look in her eyes. An unblinking stare, as if it's piercing the heart of Enjoh Tomoe's being. 

"--- A drastic error. Enduring was your forte, but in the end you chose the painful path. When we first met, you weren't you. Having lost your future did the empty you want to die like just before?" 

... The girl who tried to kill me for a change of mood '''(TN: bad phrase here but I couldn't think of anything that fit)'''. 
... The girl who I thought I would be happy to be killed by. 
The two throw the question at me. 

... Let's see. 

That night, I was handling myself recklessly. I thought it perfectly fine to beat someone to death, and on the other hand I thought it would be perfectly fine to be beaten to death. But, I didn't want to die. At the time, yeah... it was simply that living had become exhausting. I hated myself, a fake living without any goals in life. This self of mine that thought it wanted to die but couldn't even kill itself was so loathsome that I couldn't take it. 

Even now when I've confessed all my sins to Ryougi like this I don't want to die. --- But nevertheless, humans will ultimately die. For me it will just be a little quicker, little shabbier, and less meaningful than another person's. 

... Is that it. That's probably what I couldn't stand. 

A worthless, stale death. 

If I'm going to die like that, I would rather --- 

"--- dying for you, it seems much more real so I prefer it." 

"No thanks. A life like yours, I don't need it." 

The knife drops. 

Like a cat that's lost interest in its prey, Ryougi distances herself from me. Is she going out somewhere? Ryougi picks up her leather jacket and prepares to go out. 

I can only watch her. 

"Hey, Enjoh. Where's your house?" 

Ryougi's voice is cold like the time when I first met her. 

... My family went from rent to rent. We were chased around because after half a year we wouldn't be able to pay the rent, or the harassment of the debt collectors would be too much to take. I hated that --- I hated it from when I was young, so I envied a normal household. 

"What are you going to do with the answer? It's number 405 in some mansion." 

"I'm not talking about that. I mean the home you want to return to. If you don't know that's that." 

Ryougi opens the door. 

As she went out, the girl spoke without even looking back. 

"Well, I'm going. If you feel like it you can use this place again." 

Ryougi disappears. 

Finding myself left behind alone this place seemed to become so bleak that it looked like the only colours were white and black. 

While I looked at the room that had become totally black and white, the room where I had stayed for a month with my rusty mind, I decided to leave.